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Guns, Germs and Steel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel Which tries to answer the

Guns, Germs and Steel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel Which tries to answer the question: > Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?

sdoering 5y ago
I would balance it with 'Why Nations Fail'. I can understand the critique it received while still thinking it a good introduction for the question.
karpierz 5y ago
That's essentially a book of just-so stories/post-hoc hypotheses. Edit: See a more specific critique here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_detailed_rebuttalalternative_to_the_one_that/dk6htc0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_det...
- k__ 5y ago
  Nice. I read the book and found it quite good. It seems at least the conquest part is wrong, but that part didn't interest me that much. What I found most interesting was a thesis at the beginning of the book. That real innovation (revolution instead of evolutio ) is mostly accident and not facilitated by personal virtue of the innovator.
- CPLX 5y ago
  I’m all for rebuttals of just-so stories but that comment is wholly unconvincing. He just says “actually it didn’t happen” in 5 different ways. But, like, they speak Spanish in Lima and Mexico City and they don’t speak Aztec or Quechua in Madrid. The Europeans did in fact colonize portions of the entire world. There were German armies in Namibia and Dutch in Malaysia and Spanish in Patagonia. That seems... notable? I literally have no unique insight at all into why that happened. But it does seem like an interesting question. I guess the answer could be “no reason” or “it was the result of a non-determinative complex adaptive system and the concept of why isn’t really relevant or repeatable” which are fine responses. But that comment you posted seems to just be refusing to engage with the question.
  - karpierz 5y ago
    The comment is explaining "Guns, Germs & Steel's explanation of why they speak Spanish in Patagonia is inaccurate". Did you find it unconvincing in that regard? If so, what specifically did you find to be flawed in the critique? The comment isn't trying to explain "X is the reason why they speak Spanish in Patagonia". But I don't think that's necessary to rebut a poorly justified Grand Theory of History (tm).
    - CPLX 5y ago
      I didn’t think it was a critique at all. It was basically just saying well I have issues with how he describes the conquest. It didn’t happen like that, here are some nitpicks about how he’s describing it and now I’ll throw in some unrelated metaphor of a kid in a science class to say that disagreeing with someone’s specific takes on events that are fundamentally unknowable and hundreds of years old is the same as a little kid saying yellow is green. The problem is that any moron can see the main observation that set off the discussion. There’s not an equal distribution of wealth and power across cultures at all. I read guns germs and steel and it’s interesting and I didn’t remember it as being polemical or sure of its conclusions. My memory if it was basically a recounting of history that said this is all complicated and cause and effect is pretty murky but here is a grab bag of some broad ideas that could comprise a thesis for why things look the way they do. I would expect any reasonable critique to either say actually no I think these reasons are overstated and these other ones are more important. Or they could say look human history isn’t deterministic the best way to think about this is mostly a series of butterfly effects. Or as complexity theorists would say, it’s just path dependence, aka a stochastic walk with absorbing barriers. Those seem like reasonable alternate points of view. The critique I’m talking about here though is just like “nah didn’t happen” when confronted with a plainly observable chronology of global power and cultural expansion.
      - karpierz 5y ago
        I think if you view "Guns, Germs & Steel" as a book of hypotheses about world history, with no evidence for their factualness, then the critique isn't valuable. Essentially, you'd be viewing GGS as a fan-fic about world history. If you think that GGS is making factual claims about the world, and if the supporting evidence provided for them isn't factual, then the claims aren't facts, they're just speculation. This is the point that the critique makes; the assumptions that GGS makes in its theories aren't true, and so the conclusions are just random ideas as opposed to truths.
jasonhong 5y ago
It seems that a lot of historians strongly disagree with Jared Diamond's methods and thesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel. See here for /r/AskHistorians FAQ about him: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

sdoering 5y ago

I would balance it with 'Why Nations Fail'. I can understand the critique it received while still thinking it a good introduction for the question.

karpierz 5y ago

That's essentially a book of just-so stories/post-hoc hypotheses. Edit: See a more specific critique here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_detailed_rebuttalalternative_to_the_one_that/dk6htc0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_det...

k__ 5y ago
Nice. I read the book and found it quite good. It seems at least the conquest part is wrong, but that part didn't interest me that much. What I found most interesting was a thesis at the beginning of the book. That real innovation (revolution instead of evolutio ) is mostly accident and not facilitated by personal virtue of the innovator.
CPLX 5y ago
I’m all for rebuttals of just-so stories but that comment is wholly unconvincing. He just says “actually it didn’t happen” in 5 different ways. But, like, they speak Spanish in Lima and Mexico City and they don’t speak Aztec or Quechua in Madrid. The Europeans did in fact colonize portions of the entire world. There were German armies in Namibia and Dutch in Malaysia and Spanish in Patagonia. That seems... notable? I literally have no unique insight at all into why that happened. But it does seem like an interesting question. I guess the answer could be “no reason” or “it was the result of a non-determinative complex adaptive system and the concept of why isn’t really relevant or repeatable” which are fine responses. But that comment you posted seems to just be refusing to engage with the question.
- karpierz 5y ago
  The comment is explaining "Guns, Germs & Steel's explanation of why they speak Spanish in Patagonia is inaccurate". Did you find it unconvincing in that regard? If so, what specifically did you find to be flawed in the critique? The comment isn't trying to explain "X is the reason why they speak Spanish in Patagonia". But I don't think that's necessary to rebut a poorly justified Grand Theory of History (tm).
  - CPLX 5y ago
    I didn’t think it was a critique at all. It was basically just saying well I have issues with how he describes the conquest. It didn’t happen like that, here are some nitpicks about how he’s describing it and now I’ll throw in some unrelated metaphor of a kid in a science class to say that disagreeing with someone’s specific takes on events that are fundamentally unknowable and hundreds of years old is the same as a little kid saying yellow is green. The problem is that any moron can see the main observation that set off the discussion. There’s not an equal distribution of wealth and power across cultures at all. I read guns germs and steel and it’s interesting and I didn’t remember it as being polemical or sure of its conclusions. My memory if it was basically a recounting of history that said this is all complicated and cause and effect is pretty murky but here is a grab bag of some broad ideas that could comprise a thesis for why things look the way they do. I would expect any reasonable critique to either say actually no I think these reasons are overstated and these other ones are more important. Or they could say look human history isn’t deterministic the best way to think about this is mostly a series of butterfly effects. Or as complexity theorists would say, it’s just path dependence, aka a stochastic walk with absorbing barriers. Those seem like reasonable alternate points of view. The critique I’m talking about here though is just like “nah didn’t happen” when confronted with a plainly observable chronology of global power and cultural expansion.
    - karpierz 5y ago
      I think if you view "Guns, Germs & Steel" as a book of hypotheses about world history, with no evidence for their factualness, then the critique isn't valuable. Essentially, you'd be viewing GGS as a fan-fic about world history. If you think that GGS is making factual claims about the world, and if the supporting evidence provided for them isn't factual, then the claims aren't facts, they're just speculation. This is the point that the critique makes; the assumptions that GGS makes in its theories aren't true, and so the conclusions are just random ideas as opposed to truths.

jasonhong 5y ago

It seems that a lot of historians strongly disagree with Jared Diamond's methods and thesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel. See here for /r/AskHistorians FAQ about him: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...